We know what you’re thinking — What in the world does AIG have to say about such a thing? Moreover, are they really going to, ah, sink low enough to use such an event to promote their creationist enterprise? Good questions. Let’s take a look.

On Thursday, February 28, at about 11:00 PM (Eastern Time) a Florida man was in bed sleeping when a huge hole opened under his house, swallowing part of the inside of his house and him with it.

After going through the tale, then they explain what sinkholes are and how they occur. We’ll skip most of that too, but here’s an interesting excerpt:

Under most of Florida’s relatively thin veneer of soils, surface sands, and clays are numerous stacked limestone beds, the total thickness of which is up to 3,000 feet. Conventionally dated as Pliocene to Eocene (supposedly 3–40 million years old), in the biblical framework of earth history these fossil-bearing limestone layers were only deposited after the Flood waters had finished draining off the rest of North America. Their accumulation continued for a few decades into the post-Flood era, prior to the onset of the Ice Age.

You see, dear reader, such things happen because of the Flood. Skipping some paragraphs about the geology of Florida, we come to this:

Of course, this process does not require millions of years. With all the groundwater being pumped from the limestone, plus high rainfall and other factors, the large cavities that become sinkholes can form in tens to hundreds of years.

Okay, sinkholes are obviously a young-Earth phenomenon. Then AIG talks about how common sinkholes are in Florida, and they conclude their article with this:

Sadly, dangerous sinkholes forming suddenly are yet another sign that we live in a sin-cursed world. Tragedies like this can strike at any time, which is a sober reminder that we need to be always ready to meet our Creator [scripture reference].

So there you are. The sinkhole tragedy is being exploited by AIG as a creationist teaching opportunity. The unfortunate fellow who was swallowed up is treated as if he’s a character in a Jack Chick comic book. One minute he’s lying in bed, perhaps steeped in his sins, and the next minute — poof! — he’s gone. The lesson, dear reader, is that because of the sin of Adam & Eve, terrible things happen in this world, and you must always be ready to face your final judgment.

12 responses to “Answers in Genesis & the Florida Sinkhole”

The AIG article concludes, “Sadly, dangerous sinkholes forming suddenly are yet another sign that we live in a sin-cursed world. Tragedies like this can strike at any time, which is a sober reminder that we need to be always ready to meet our Creator.”

Yes, that… or it’s an indication that we need to move to a more geologically stable place.

Maybe the poor guy was punished for the dream he was having. So there’s a lesson to be learned here — if you want to avoid a swim in the lovely lake o’ lava, be careful to keep your dreams G-rated.

And as for moving to a more stable place, Florida seems to have more than its share of hazards. Sinkholes, tornados, hurricanes, wildfires, drought, snakes, mosquitoes, sharks — about the only thing missing is an earthquake fault. And if that’s not bad enough, the whole state will be submerged when global warming melts Antarctica. Or sooner if there’s a major tsunami in the Atlantic or the Gulf. Maybe one caused by a large meteorite?

I was just talking to a colleague about how miserable it is to go like that: Waking to a falling sensation only to be consumed and buried alive by the Earth! How dreadful a person one must be to exploit that.

After the news broke of this specific sinkhole I checked out sinkhole maps on the inter-webs to see if Charlotte County was on a safe footing, and it sure is! Poor folks in Tampa, St Pete. and Clearwater, however are on some sinkhole prone ground.

As to all the comments about my state being the brunt of many natural disasters, you can’t forget not only is Florida the tornado capital of the USA, it’s the lightning capital of the world! Mix in a bunch of old geezers near the end and you got a safe haven for almost any dogma. I believe the mean age in Englewood, FL(where I live) is 68.

@ RSG: It wouldn’t be the first nation-buster meteorite to hit the Gulf. I believe it was the bay of Campeche. I don’t believe I’d survive that one at 15′ above sea level, 1.5 miles to Lemon Bay and 2.5 miles to the Gulf as a crow flies. Scratch that, I’m gonna be optimistic. I’ll get in a boat and ride the wave to New Smyrna Beach and pick you up.

On a side note: This gives me an excuse to finally get together some pirate regalia. Yarrghh!

Yes 3000 feet of limestone containg many hundreds of massive correlable extinction events, changing faunas, transitions from low energy lagoonal mudstones, to oolitic grainstone shoal facies belts which were then buried to 5 or 10 thousand feet, lithified and compacted all in a few thousand years despite ZERO evidence that this can occur in present day depositional environments or basinal settings. Calcareous cement grains requiring millions of years to form miraculously grow overnight into the pore spaces .the rock is subjected to massive tectonic forces cracking and fracturing the now lithified limestone beds while it is uplifted during collision with the Caribbean plate. Then after shallower beds are removed by extensive periods of erosion after the Florida arch is formed, the faulted limestones experience massive groundwater dissolution when high pH groundwater, flowing through the cracks, dissolvesthe CaCO3 and carries some away forming karstified subsurface caves. These caves collapse sometimes forming spectacular surface terranes. OR., its a freaking miracle. Which means historical geology, stratigraphy, carbonate sedimentology, plate tectonics, mineralogy, geomorphology and structural geology are all bogus. Looks like Lyell
, Hutton hundreds of geologists, AND the Florida Geological Survey have it all wronng.
Wow who knew. All that in one chapter in one book written by some guy who had no idea Florida even existed. This is good stuff.

They ‘re not very gneiss over there at AIG and once again theyve taken geology for granite.
My sediments aren’t exactly impressed with AIGs logic skills or their knowledge of the basics of geoscience. Just sayin.

Fecal pellets excreted by invertebrates and dominantly composed of calcium carbonate are a significant component of some types of limestone packestones and grainstones. Looks like AIG doesn’t ‘t know their s*#t.
🙂

Nice job, doodlebugger! AiG would also have a tough time explaining plate tectonics in terms consistent with a 10,000 year old earth, especially now that we can accurately measure each year’s rate of sea-floor spreading. But I’m sure they have some kind of totally improbable biblical explanation.

Doodlebug,
Do you mean that the limestone is under 5000 feet of sediment? Seems impossible for that to form post-Flood as AIG says.

AIG says the limestone formed in “a few decades” post-Flood. If it took 30 years to form a layer of limestone 3000 feet thick, that’s 100 feet of limestone per year for 30 years or about 4 inches per day. Of course limestone is mostly fossils of skeletons of tiny plankton, foraminifera IIRC. Tiny particles take a very long time to settle out of the water according to Stokes Law which they ignore. Not to mention the food and time needed to grow them, or the heat they would produce, or the time needed to uplift Florida, or to solidify the ooze.
— Diogenes

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